"Return of the indies," reads the banner outside Kyoto's Miyako Messe, the host location for this year's BitSummit. True enough, the event was back for its third year, but Japanese indies hadn't really gone anywhere. The scene may have been scattered and relegated to the shadows before the BitRider came along and gave it a shot of adrenaline, but the familiar faces in the crowd suggested these indies have always been here.

It was apropos then, late in the afternoon on the opening day, July 11th, that someone watching Triangle Service's Toshiaki Fujino give a presentation about his experiences in the industry might have also spotted Sony Computer Entertainment President of Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida listening along, or spied a glimpse of famed Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi.

There have only been a few times, if ever, anyone could've imagined a independent games festival in Japan attracting hordes of fans, international media, and luminaries such as Igarashi, or Mega Man co-designer Keiji Inafune, let alone a high-ranking executive from a major gaming company. It was a testament to how bright the spotlight is becoming.

Re-Logic's 2D sandbox hit Terraria is heading to 3DS and Wii U in Q1 2016, publisher 505 Games has announced.

Both versions will feature touchscreen controls with online and offline multiplayer. The Wii U version will support up to eight-player multiplayer with four-player split-screen available. The 3DS version, however, is capped at four players total.

Oft likened to a 2D Minecraft, Terraria originally launched on PC in 2011 before being ported to Xbox 360, PS3, Vita, iOS and Android in 2013. It then arrived on PS4 and Xbox One last November.

Razer and a new Ouya publishing entity will work to satisfy previously involved Free the Games

"Razer has a real interest in supporting indie developers and furthering the expansion of Android (FtG) developers, while creating a more open, sustainable distribution model that benefits gamers and expands revenue opportunities for all parties involved.

Hardware developer Razer has acquired all of Ouya's software assets, the company announced today.

While Razer isn't buying the console itself, its acquisition of the software means it can use Ouya's tech in its own Android-based micro-console Forge TV. "In the near future, Razer will be providing existing Ouya users with a clear path of migration to the more advanced Forge TV micro-console and Serval controller bundle," Razer stated in its announcement.

"Razer's intention is to allow Ouya users to bring their games, controllers, and accounts to the Cortex TV platform on the Forge micro-console, advancing the experience of Android gaming on TV that they have previously enjoyed. Additionally, Razer is planning deep product discounts for incoming Ouya users to purchase Razer hardware, and a spate of freebies, giveaways, and promotions to enjoy on their new Forge consoles."

Like its iOS brethren, the Android version of Fallout Shelter will be free to download with in-app purchases.

Furthermore, all versions of Fallout Shelter will receive new updates shortly, including servant bot Mr. Handy as a premium reward. "Have him collect resources inside your Vault, send him into the wasteland to collect loot, and defend your Vault from creatures and disasters, including all new Deathclaw invasions and Molerat infestations," Bethesda teased on its official blog.

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers 20th Anniversary Edition is now available as a free download on both iOS and Android tablets.

This remake of Jane Jensen's classic southern gothic point-and-click adventure launched last October on PC and Mac. That version costs £12.99 / $19.99, while the mobile edition is free to begin, but contains in-app purchases to unlock further sections of the story. That being said, unlocking the full thing will still only cost $7 (About £5).

Sins of the Fathers 20th Anniversary Edition adds high-res 3D graphics, a reorchestrated soundtrack, more puzzles and scenes, a new hint system, and all new behind-the-scenes content.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1770024Thu, 23 Jul 2015 21:58:00 +0100Hearthstone's next expansion is all about the Hero Power

UPDATE 23/7/15 8.00am: Blizzard has now announced UK pricing for The Grand Tournament's pre-purchase offer, which costs £34.99 on PC, Mac and Android.

£34.99 is the standard price of 40 card packs, but this offer will net you 50 Grand Tournament packs when they launch plus a special card back.

Last year game developer Asher Vollmer released a deceptively addictive tile puzzler called Threes. We, especially Wes, really liked it. Today, Vollmer revealed on Twitter that the free version he released last month doubled his daily income.

Vollmer even made a nifty graph comparing the revenue from Threes' free version to that of its £2.29 / $2.99 paid brethren. As you can see, the free version ended up being a smidge more lucrative that its pay-to-play counterpart, at least for the month of June.

I meet the man trying to fix 22cans in the bar of the Hilton Brighton Metropole. The Develop conference is happening all around us, although at a slower pace this morning, because last night everyone went out for a drink.

Well, not everyone. Simon Phillips, the new CEO of 22cans, didn't. Simon is alert and ready to talk in detail about 22cans. Immediately I sense he'll be up for what's to come, which is great, because there's a lot to work through.

22cans is perhaps the most controversial game developer in the UK. Ever since Godus, which Peter Molyneux Kickstarted to the tune of half a million pounds, launched on Steam as an Early Access title in September 2013, 22cans has faced criticism. We'd hoped Godus would rekindle the god game genre. What we got was a PC port of a middling free-to-download mobile game. We felt duped.

There's a new expansion for fantasy role-playing game Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition in the works.

Siege of Dragonspear adds a new chapter to the Bhaalspawn saga, developer Beamdog has announced. It's set between Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2, and, according to Beamdog, offers around 25 hours of gameplay. You need to own Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition to play it.

You can import your character or saved game from Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition into Siege of Dragonspear, and, usefully, you can continue your adventure by exporting your Siege of Dragonspear game to Baldur's Gate 2: Enhanced Edition.

Historical episodic adventure 1979 Revolution, a game about the events surrounding Iran's cultural revolution, is now set to release its debut episode, Black Friday, this autumn on PC, Mac, iOS, Android and "consoles".

Developer Ink Stories creative director Navid Khonsari confirmed to Eurogamer that he's in talks with Sony and Microsoft about console releases, but the final details have yet to be sorted.

In the meantime, 1979 Revolution has launched a Steam Greenlight campaign, where the following new trailer shows off how the game is shaping up.

First-person puzzler The Talos Principle's major expansion, Road to Gehenna, is due 23rd July on PC, Mac and Linux, developer Croteam has announced.

Road to Gehenna will contain four episodes full of even more challenging puzzles than the main game as players assume the role of Uriel trying to rescue souls trapped in this lost section of a simulation. It will feature an all new civilization with its own history, philosophy and characters.

The expansion is penned by The Talos Principle scribes Tom Jubert and Jonas Kyratzes. Jubert also wrote FTL, Driver: San Francisco and The Swapper, while Kryatzes was the co-creator of The Sea Will Claim Everything and The Book of Living Magic.

Just Cause 3 and Mad Max developer Avalanche Studios has just released its first mobile game, Rumble City.

Available today as a free title with in-app purchases on Android and Amazon devices, Rumble City is coming to iOS platforms on Thursday, 9th July.

Unlike Avalanche's usual action fare, Rumble City is a turn-based strategy game. The developer described this smaller outing as "a passion project for a small strike team with a deep affection for tactical gameplay and 1960's American biker culture."

Zen Studios has unveiled an Ant-Man cabinet as the latest add-on for its virtual pinball catalogue that includes Zen Pinball 2, Pinball FX2 and Marvel Pinball.

Based on the upcoming Paul Rudd movie, which is in and of itself based on a comic-book about a shrinking man named Scott Lang, Zen's Ant-Man table lets players reenact the hero's trials and tribulations fighting Yellowjacket in fierce pinball combat. Sure, that may seem silly to us, but a pinball's got to be like that boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark to an ant, so this is serious business for our tiny hero.

Fallout Shelter has introduced its first character from the upcoming Fallout 4.

Available as a random card in lunchboxes - the Fallout parlance for treasure chest, acquired via in-game currency or real money microtransactions - the new cast member is named Preston Garvey. Described on the Bethesda Blog as a "Legendary Dweller" of the Commonwealth Minutemen, Preston sports a nifty Laser Musket.

Here's how he looks in both Fallout Shelter and in Fallout 4, where he brandishes his trademark weapon:

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1765385Tue, 30 Jun 2015 21:58:00 +0100Mojang is shuttering development on its card combat game Scrolls

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Minecreaft developer Mojang's card-combat game Scrolls isn't going to receive any additional content since its Echoes update earlier this month.

"After much deliberation, we've come to an important decision that we'd like to share: Echoes will be the last major content patch for Scrolls," Mojang said on its official blog. "We won't be adding features or sets from now on, though we are planning to keep a close eye on game balance."

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1765162Mon, 29 Jun 2015 19:46:00 +0100The World Ends With You is back on iOS

Square Enix's cult classic modern RPG The World Ends With You has returned to the iOS App Store after a four month absence.

This iOS version, entitled The World Ends with You: Solo Remix, faced erasure from the App Store in February due to compatibility issues with iOS 8. Due to this incompatibility, the game wasn't even available for re-download if players deleted it from their iOS device and wanted to reclaim it.

This mobile adaptation of The World Ends With You isn't cheap, however, as it's still priced at £13.49 / $17.99.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1765095Mon, 29 Jun 2015 15:39:00 +0100Video: Why you might like to play Her Story

It's difficult to talk about a thing like Her Story without edging into spoiler territory. This is a game that relies so heavily on the player making their own discoveries and we don't want to spoil that. Just imagine the comments section.

Right, we'll give it a shot. Join Christian Donlan and myself below, as we avoid the narrative, but instead focus on the similarities between Her Story and surprisingly, the board game Battleships.

Lego Minifigures Online, the MMO by The Secret World developer Funcom, is launching on 29th June as a buy-to-play affair.

Its beta was previously available in free-to-play form.

This buy-to-play version will cost $29.99 on PC, Mac and Linux, while its iOS and Android versions will go for $4.99. Granted the mobile versions will only include the first world for that price, but players will be able to purchase additional worlds as in-app purchases. This option will be available at launch for the iOS version, while the Android version's add-on content won't arrive until summer.

Harmonix Music VR, which is also due out for other virtual reality headsets, is an attempt to define the category of "VR music visualisation", designer Jon Carter said in a post on the PlayStation Blog.

It takes any song you give it and generates a unique, musically-driven event sequence.

Guitar Hero Live will be out on 20th October for PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and Wii U, Activision has announced.

It will also arrive on select unannounced mobile devices.

The game bundled with a new guitar controller will retail for $99.99 in North America, so we expect that to be somewhere in the neighborhood of £70 in the UK. We'll update when we get the official UK pricing.

How does this work, you ask? Microsoft debuted the following demo of it at its E3 press conference.

Basically, one person can look at their Minecraft world as a 3D hologram on a table, then scroll around, peer into buildings (by using their real head to clip through the virtual walls), or even elevate the landscape to peruse what lies beneath its surface.

Telltale has announced a new mini-series in its Walking Dead canon based around Michonne, a character in the comic book series.

Due this autumn, this spin-off will be set after the events kicking off Season Two of the game. As such, Michonne will be DLC for Season Two, and you'll have the have the first episode of that season to access it.

Once the undisputed king of the Android smartphone market, Korean firm Samsung has had a bit of a wobble over the past few years. Its yearly Galaxy S updates have always supplied processing power in abundance, but Samsung's overzealous use of plastic and seeming inability to evolve its basic design language gained the firm some fierce critics. Of course, when sales are brisk it's relatively easy to ignore such negative feedback, but last year was something of a turning point for Samsung. The Galaxy S5 sold worse than expected and overall profits dropped as a result - unsurprisingly, the Korean giant has been spurred into action and this year's flagship offering couldn't be more different - in physical terms, at least.

Gone is the cheap plastic casing and the faux-metal trim of the S5 and in their place is a handset that could have come from the Cupertino drawing boards of Apple itself. The front and back of the Galaxy S6 are fashioned from tempered glass, while a band of machined metal runs around the edge - complete with iPhone 6-style bevel and very similar speaker grille. Enough has been written about Samsung's alleged copying of Apple's designs and there's little point in dredging that up here, suffice to say that the company has perhaps given its critics even more ammo with this slightly derivative design. Still, it's worth asking exactly how much variety we can realistically expect in this market when 99 per cent of phones are practically identical from an aesthetic standpoint, and cloning accusations aside, the S6 is a paradigm shift for Samsung as a company. Finally, it's making premium-priced handsets which actually feel premium, and that's something to be celebrated.

The big news with the Galaxy S6 is that it uses Samsung's own Exynos 7420 chipset rather than a Qualcomm-made Snapdragon. The Snapdragon 810 has issues with performance and heat, while the Exynos offers better results with no temperature problems. With 3GB of RAM also included, the Galaxy S6 supplies one of the best Android experiences yet, with silky-smooth usability and top-tier 3D performance when playing host to the most demanding Android games available. It's also worth pointing out that the camera comfortably beats anything in the Android sector, and gives Apple's own world-beating snappers a run for their money.

UPDATE 13:26 11/6/2015: Blizzard has confirmed that the new Heroes will be sold for either £6.99 if you purchase them through the in-game shop of the desktop client, or £8.99 if you buy them via your iOS device.

As Hearthstone is a relatively undemanding game to run on PC or Mac - and you can use the same account across multiple platforms - it makes sense to buy the new content through the desktop client if you're at all able to, and are keen to add Magni to your collection.

The option to purchase the replacement Warrior Hero will become available with the game's next patch. The update has yet to be dated, but will likely introduce the recently announced Tavern Brawl content at the same time.

Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee is getting a mobile version on iOS and Android devices, the game's original developer Oddworld Inhabitants has announced.

The port is being handled by Square One Games, who previously ported Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath and The Bard's Tale to mobile platforms.

Munch's Oddysee marked Oddworld's first foray into 3D gaming in 2001. It followed the tale of the last Gabbit, a frog-like creature fished to near extinction. He and series stalwart Abe team up to take down the evil corporation that has slaughtered their brethren.

Hitman: Sniper, the next game from the folks behind the critically acclaimed Hitman: Go, is out tomorrow on iOS and Android devices.

Unlike Go, Sniper is based on, well, sniping. From your perch in Montenegro you'll face multiple scenarios that involve slaying targets from afar. The map will change between stages and it's a score-driven affair with competitive leaderboards.

"We've spent quite some time in soft launch receiving feedback and comments from everyone who enjoyed and shared the early version of the game, during which we worked hard to iron out all the wrinkles before putting it out there for everyone," said developer Square Enix Montreal. "It may have taken us a little more time than expected - but we believe if something is worth doing, it's worth doing right.,"

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1758840Wed, 03 Jun 2015 22:48:00 +0100The people behind This War of Mine have big plans for their next game

How do you follow This War of Mine? This is the game that told a story of war from a new perspective: a civilian's. Can you survive a conflict? "It sounds horrible. It is horrible. But it's brilliant," we declared in our Games of 2014 reflection piece.

This War of Mine scooped awards and was debated in prestigious mainstream publications around the world. Survivors of real wars from Kosovo, Syria, even World War 2 reached out to thank the studio for its work, I learned.

This War of Mine put Polish developer 11 bit studios - formed in 2010 - on the map.

Disney is taking another stab at the "toy to life" genre with a new project called Playmation.

Where Disney Infinity is primarily a video game with some physical figurines complementing it, Playmation is going to be primarily based around toys and physical play with some light mobile app integration.

So how's it work? It's a little unclear at this point, but the basic gist is that people will buy their kids wearable computers in the form of costumes that will work with mobile apps to create physical challenges for them.

Like Temple Run or most mobile games with "run" in the title, Relic Run tasks players with navigating an on-rails obstacle course full of various hazards. Spikes, traps and pits are all liberally sprinkled throughout what amounts to Lara Croft's most ridiculous exercise regimen.

Lara Croft: Relic Run looks a bit more complex than other games of its ilk, however, as players can sabotage each other's runs by cursing them. There's also light combat and boss fights, like that T-Rex, and you can ride a motorcycle. Or the aforementioned T-Rex for that matter.

Fallen London, the browser-based adventure game that spawned Sunless Sea, is coming to iOS devices later this year.

Developer Failbetter Games noted that its "very hopeful that an Android version will follow.”

The developer said that its 2009 text-heavy adventure, previously known as Echo Bazaar, has doubled in popularity since Sunless Sea launched in February. And why wouldn't it? We awarded Sunless Sea the rare Eurogamer Essential badge and Fallen London is set in the same world.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1757462Thu, 28 May 2015 01:10:00 +0100Cortana is coming to iOS and Android

Microsoft's "digital assistant", the Halo-inspired AI Cortana, will be available on iOS and Android devices in in addition to Windows Phone when Windows 10 launches this summer.

As detailed on the Windows Blog, Cortana will exist on third-party phones as a separate app that will work in conjunction with your "Phone Companion" app on PC. As such, you'll still need computer with Windows 10 to kick off the process, but iOS and Android devices will be able to sync with Microsoft's operating system back home.

"The 'Phone Companion' app on the PC will help you install the Cortana app from the Google Play or Apple App Store onto your phone so you'll be able to take the intelligence of Cortana with you, wherever you go," corporate vice president Joe Belfiore explained.